Ahead of the 21st Bafta games awards this April, the institution is running a public survey asking people to nominate the most influential video game of all time. As the survey points out, this is an open-ended question: early, groundbreaking titles such as Space Invaders and Pong regularly crop up as answers because they helped … Read more
Samuel Butler’s 1903 novel The Way of All Flesh carried with it an implied subtitle. In the book of Kings, from which Butler drew his title, the dying David tells his son Solomon, “take thou courage and shew thyself a man”. Butler’s inference was clear enough: here is a book about what it means to … Read more
Mehdi Yarrahi, a well-known Iranian protest singer who spoke out against the country’s strict dress code for women, has been given 74 lashes as part of an agreement to end a criminal case against him. Yarrahi was initially convicted in January 2024 of acting unlawfully by releasing a protest song in September 2023 entitled Your … Read more
“I’m quite convinced that, no matter what I say, I’m not going to be able to convince you to kill for me,” film-maker Errol Morris says drily. “And, alas, I have to say that I don’t have the desire to kill anybody or to convince you to kill on my behalf. It just isn’t there. … Read more
Van Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum is so popular it has taken steps, it was recently reported, to reduce visitor numbers. I can only assume Anselm Kiefer’s alienating exhibition is part of this plan to scare off the punters. A curator lent weight to the suspicion by telling me “the sort of people who come here” … Read more
About 36.6 million Americans watched President Trump live on television on Tuesday night, tuning in for his 100-minute speech to a joint session of Congress — the longest of its kind in the modern era. Nielsen, the ratings agency, said the live television audience for Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and often pugilistic address was up 13 … Read more
Tom Llamas will take over as the anchor of NBC’s flagship news program, “NBC Nightly News,” the company said on Wednesday. Mr. Llamas, 45, has been the anchor on the company’s streaming news outlet, NBC News Now. He succeeds Lester Holt, the longtime anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” who last month announced his plans to … Read more
Seven centuries ago a poet penned the most ecstatic art review ever written. Francesco Petrarca, known as Petrarch, had commissioned the Sienese artist Simone Martini to paint a portrait of his beloved, Laura. The result was so marvellous, he wrote, that if all the famous artists of ancient Greece “competed for a thousand years they … Read more
During the peak of the pandemic, when many musicians spent their time writing songs, Peter Wolf did nothing but read. During that prolonged period of isolation and uncertainty, he comforted himself by devouring shelves full of books, including memoirs penned by other musicians. “After a while all those memoirs started to seem the same,” he … Read more
On a cold evening in London, two German tourists survey the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Lina, 19, outlines their master plan to meet Tom Hiddleston, starring in Much Ado About Nothing. Tonight: scrutinise the procedure at stage door, where only ticket holders are allowed to wait for a chance to meet the cast. Tomorrow: watch … Read more